One thing I’ve found in this role is that people have to be ready to heal. Normally they find me when they’re ready, but their healing doesn’t always happen all at once.
I have a client who has been with me for 3 years now. They came to me with breathing issues – severe asthma and a nasty cough, causing low back pain and significantly impacting their daily activities. We treated this and things have been significantly better. Since then we see each other every 3-4 months for a quick check up to make sure everything’s doing okay, and get on top of anything which isn’t before it becomes a problem.
Around October last year I felt they were ready to address something else which was on their intake form – they have no sense of smell. Zero. Nothing.
This hasn’t always been the case. In 2009 they were walking down some marble steps when they slipped and fell, banging their head. They were rushed to the emergency department and checked over. Latterly they visited various specialists in the neuro and ENT fields. Two years on, they performed a final test, whereupon it was declared the nerves had been severed and they would never regain their sense of smell.
So, 9 years after that “diagnosis” I felt they were ready. I explained what we were attempting to do, and how we would go about it, and then we set to work.
The sphenoid is an amazing butterfly shaped bone, the cornerstone of the cranium. Often referred to as one of the body’s diaphragms it’s placement and orientation are crucial to so many functions. In conjunction with the ethmoid bone it also ‘houses’ the left and right olfactory tracts to the olfactory bulbs (CN I). Axons of the olfactory nerve perforate the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone, entering the nasal cavity where they reside in the olfactory mucosa and respond to odorous stimuli. They then relay that information to the brain via the olfactory bulb and nerve – so you can see how the alignment of these two bones might be crucial to being able to smell!
Before we started any treatment we reconfirmed the inability to smell with ammonia based smelling salts. After 4 weekly treatments we were forced into another (pandemic) lockdown. 10 weeks later we were able to retest. Despite neither of us being overly hopeful so early on in the treatment the left side was able to detect the smelling salts. This obviously came as quite a shock (in every sense of the word), but quite a pleasant one after the effects of the smelling salts had worn off!
Our treatment will continue with suitable gaps for nerve regrowth / regeneration 👨🏻🎓 but this is a great first step after such a damning diagnosis.
The important take home from this ….
The body is ready when the body is ready, don’t force a correction ❤️
Image credit Essential Anatomy 5
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